Big Brand Mistakes in eCommerce
Big brands equal good ecommerce. Every company in the country realises the potential for their brand online – their largest retail store, their largest audience and most importantly, their largest potential for increased revenue.
The crux of the matter? The statement isn’t true; big brands don’t equal good ecommerce. Searching the internet for ecommerce opportunities, I’ve came across countless brands not realising their potential, throwing away money on big budget PPC campaigns but ultimately advertising sites that are full of consumer friction.
It’s like a football team spending their budget on an expensive striker but forgetting to shore up the hole in defence. You need the solid foundation of a consumer-focused site before you start driving new customers through other channels.
Whilst I’m not going to focus on one site (this isn’t a case study) I wanted to highlight a number of friction issues surprisingly prominent on big brand ecommerce sites.
Your Caribbean Catamaran
Launched in early 2010, Your Caribbean Catamaran and its French sibling Location Catamaran Caraibes are aimed solely at the growing catamaran rental marketplace.
Responsible for both the back and front end design, I utilised WordPress for the project, allowing the client to personally manage their updates without knowledge of HTML and CSS.
Your Caribbean Catamaran generated a number of leads shortly after launch, resulting in long term rentals led through organic search. Exceeding initial client objectives, the site turned profit in less than a month.
Redesign, Relaunch, Rethink…
After spending the best part of 8 months travelling across Asia and the Caribbean, the site in its previous state has gradually fallen into disrepair. Deciding it was time to fix some of the mistakes of my initial design, I’m relaunching today, with a more content managed site. I’ve done away with static pages for the most part, specifically the portfolio section, which now runs on the new custom post type features available within WordPress 3.0. Now through the backend, I can add a portfolio item, give it a unique layout and it will automatically be available within the site.
An element I’m trying to introduce more is my photography – specifically travel – which now has its own portfolio section here. Think of the blog section as more of a scrapbook, pictures and ideas that are testing the water, as opposed to my portfolio, which I would feel is more definitive of my style and work.
Reid Furniture eCommerce Store
Being Scotland and Ireland’s largest furniture retailer, Reid Furniture were looking to launch a site that would reflect their brand values, as well as offering an online service deserving of their reputation. Having recently launched, it has proven to be a fantastic success, bringing a return on investment within 30 days, lowering bounce rates across the site and seeing huge increases in conversion rates.
I managed this project from initial concept in terms of functionality and features, all the way to development of visual designs and eventual launch – so was extremely broad in terms of skill sets required.
Welcome to my Blog!
As the title says, welcome to my blog! I’ve finally got around to adding the blog functionality to the site, and as something that was on the ‘to do’ list for a month or so, it is great to finally get it out of the way and online.
I’m hoping this functions not only as a gateway to present some of my latest design work and photography but also as a means of motivating me to keep things fresh and constantly working on projects, be it commercial or personal.
After spending most of last year studying and travelling in South East Asia, I’ve got a large bank of images I’m looking to get online. So stay tuned!